2022-2023 Season Log

[Rick]

I know you often talk of patching and painting decoys in the off-season as if they’re yours, but how does your outfit handle decoys? Are guides expected to provide (and replace) their own?

Doug used to provide them but didn't hold guides accountable, and thousands "drifted off" to unknown ends before he quit buying them. (Once by the literal cattle trailer load from area Walmarts at season's end.) But I've always used my own for geese and my regular morning duck blinds.

[Rick]

Date: 1/1/23

Time: morning

Location: mudhole

Cloud Cover: socked in with ground fog

Wind Direction and Velocity: SE nil to light

Temperature: upper 50s to low 60s?

Moon phase: N/A

Special Notes: last day of second split

Waterfowl Activity: Squealers were far fewer than yesterday's lost souls, but still good enough numbers of teal around for a fairly fast hunt.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Probably drove the guys to distraction by teal tweeting all hunt, but plainly didn't hurt our "luck".

Hunters: 2 Buddy hunt with Bobby and Rowland

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): easy morning

Special Equipment: SOS

Curses: none

Kudos: Got to put friends who seldom get to enjoy such gunning on birds.

Birds By Species: 1 black-bellied whistling duck, 3 blue-wing teal, 7 green-wing teal, 3 pintails, 1 ringneck and 3 shovellers

[Bud]

Birds By Species: 6 black-bellied whistling ducks and12 green-wing teal

Bon appetite

[DComeaux]

Nice hunt.

[Rick]

Date: 1/9/23 Mon

Time: morning

Location: mudhole

Cloud Cover: partly

Wind Direction and Velocity: easterly moderate to fairly strong

Temperature: 40s

Moon phase: 94% waning

Special Notes: third split opener

Waterfowl Activity: Plenty of teal and spoons but too few big ducks seen.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Surprised my hunters by how aggressive I was, but most did as bid - or tried to before being banged out.

Hunters: 2, Jamie and Jay from SE Louisiana and accustomed to much slower hunting.

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): Easy morning.

Special Equipment: SOS

Curses: none

Kudos: real nice guys had a real nice time - and masks!

Birds By Species: 3 blue-wings, 10 green-wings, 2 mallards and 3 shovellers

[Deltaman]

Nothing wrong with that, and glad to see your teal are still around!

[Duck Engr]

New split, same results! Nice strap to kick it off!

[Rick]

Date: 1/10/23 Tue

Time: morning

Location: mudhole

Cloud Cover: partly

Wind Direction and Velocity: nada to moderate(?) SE

Temperature: 50s

Moon phase: 98% waning

Special Notes:

Waterfowl Activity: Plenty of teal early and enough big ducks later

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Wasn't as much shooting in the marsh this morning as most, so we were able to work more of what big ducks we saw without having them all banged out.

Hunters: Jay and Jamie again

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): The bug did a fine job of tracking down a chipped mallard that moved a long way and found two other long-fall birds I could only boat him to the general area of. Otherwise an easy morning.

Special Equipment: SOS

Curses: Lots of crowd control issues with guys programed to whack away at whatever came by resulted in next to no teal hitting when they were thick.

Kudos: The above "curse" kept us from finishing before the big duck shooting got easy. And that the guys having masks undoubtedly helped lesson our crowd control issues. Sure wish everyone brought them.

Birds By Species: 4 gadwall, 5 green-wing teal, 4 mallards, 2 pintails, 2 ringnecks and 1 wigeon

[DComeaux]

Nice strap....Would love to hear a live wigeon call again. It's been a while. I remember the BIG vocal flocks we'd see occasionally at the Marceaux farm.

[Rick]

This was the biggest flock I've seen in years with several really bright drakes, but I can't say I heard them calling. They were passing too high to even be sure they weren't divers but locked to a hail, touched their toes and dropped strait in with little additional encouragement. One guy got twisted up and never got a shot off, the other shot a hen, and I watched those sweet drakes fly off with my gun in the boat.

[5 stand]

I watched those sweet drakes fly off with my gun in the boat.

I do like to shoot the flashy ducks, if you're paying attention those Drake's always stand out...

The mud hole in my mind is really producing this year, word of mouth should be good for business...

[DComeaux]

This was the biggest flock I've seen in years with several really bright drakes, but I can't say I heard them calling. They were passing too high to even be sure they weren't divers but locked to a hail, touched their toes and dropped strait in with little additional encouragement. One guy got twisted up and never got a shot off, the other shot a hen, and I watched those sweet drakes fly off with my gun in the boat.

ouch!

[Rick]

The mud hole in my mind is really producing this year, word of mouth should be good for business...

Been absolutely blessed with a good hunting and nice folks to share it with.

[Rick]

...Would love to hear a live wigeon call again. It's been a while. I remember the BIG vocal flocks we'd see occasionally at the Marceaux farm.

Been thinking on that, Dave, and I might not have heard them if they circled eight times whistling their little heads off. Caught myself thinking the squealers had wised up and gone into silent-running mode last season(?) before finally realizing that my gun-shot old ears can no longer hear them at any real distance.

[Ricky Spanish]

...Would love to hear a live wigeon call again. It's been a while. I remember the BIG vocal flocks we'd see occasionally at the Marceaux farm.

Been thinking on that, Dave, and I might not have heard them if they circled eight times whistling their little heads off. Caught myself thinking the squealers had wised up and gone into silent-running mode last season(?) before finally realizing that my gun-shot old ears can no longer hear them at any real distance.

Funny you bring that up.
Had to sit thru this conversation between two hunters. One in front other in back they acted like I wasn't there so I heard it all loud.
Two guys. I know one but the bad hunter? I had to assume it might be me
They said shit like "bad guy can go every day and not kill a duck".
The good guy, one I despise, has ear troubles.
This is the part for you Rick....
Good guy wears game ear hearing aids and can hear wingbeats.
I've hunted with him he sees with his ears.
Crazy but perhaps you could get Adam Tudor to come hunt with you. Try finding him.
He's got his privacy settings so private that you can't.
Adam is a hearing aid expert.
Adam wasn't there that day and is neither good or bad guy in this scenario..

If it's not confusing enough one of the guys "bad guy" is named Hunter. I left out names it's confusing enough already.
Good guy is named Paul

[Rick]

Mike, a significant part of my bread and butter comes from breaking distant ducks and keeping them from sliding off to prettier marsh, and electronic hearing protection that shuts off loud calling drives me bonkers. Do keep a set of such muffs in the blind for kids who show up without, but I compromise and hunt with mechanically "filtered" "musicians' plugs" I'm willing to wear while hunting. (And double-down with under industrial muffs when working out of the airboats.)

[Darren]

FIL Mike reported good hunting on the Monday opener at Oak Island. I was invited but couldn't make it happen unfortunately.

[Rick]

FIL Mike reported good hunting on the Monday opener at Oak Island. I was invited but couldn't make it happen unfortunately.

Good to hear, I've not run into Todd or Robert, except to wave in passing, in some time.

[Rick]

Date: 1/11/23 Wed

Time: morning

Location: mudhole

Cloud Cover: hazy, light

Wind Direction and Velocity: SW mod to light and back

Temperature: 60s

Moon phase: 83% waning

Special Notes:

Waterfowl Activity: Saw nothing but some high jacks for so long that I thought be might scratch, but teal - and precious little else - started passing periodically.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Most of the green-wings worked well, but what few spoons and big ducks passed nearly all completely ignored me.

Hunters: 2, Tom and Ed

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): Caught our lone, wing-tipped mallard well out.

Special Equipment: SOS

Curses: Given our sloooow start, I'm sure not complaining, other than to say I remain no fan of westerly winds.

Kudos: Not gonna brag on any of our shooting, but all of our teal ops resulted multiple falls.

Birds By Species: 1 blue-wing teal, 1 mallard and 15 green-wing teal

[Darren]

Surely just about as zero to hero as you could have gotten. Way to grind and make it count when they eventually showed!

[DComeaux]

Good hunt Rick. The GW can sure make the counter click a bit quicker.

Way to grind and make it count when they eventually showed!

I chuckled at this one. Being his cutoff is at 9:30, I'll take that grind for 17 ducks everyday.

[Duck Engr]

I definitely said an audible “wow” when I saw the green wing number. Didn’t expect that based on the lead up.

[Rick]

I definitely said an audible “wow” when I saw the green wing number. Didn’t expect that based on the lead up.

Me, either. The marsh was eerily quiet early on, with Isaac's and the back blind being the only ones getting much shooting, while we weren't doing anything, nada, zip, zilch, nothing. Thought we might at least get to take advantage of the quiet when the big ducks started, but few ever did pass, high or low, and none but a low mallard pair ever responded beyond banking to say, "Hi, Rick." Didn't even see enough spoons to make a mess - and the few we did thumbed their long noses at me, too.

Was pretty sure I'd cursed us by "counting my money at the table," so to speak, after reading 5 stand's post above about this being an especially productive year, which prompted my superstitious self to tempt ill fate by crunching our numbers, and find we were just 11 short of 1,000 birds - a bar we'd not touched since 2016-'17. Went into the morning with a "Watch us scratch, now." attitude, and that sure seemed to be playing out until the green-wing started trickling through the marsh mid hunt. God bless 'em.

[5 stand]

1006.... Mighty fine !!

[DComeaux]

Was pretty sure I'd cursed us by "counting my money at the table," so to speak, after reading 5 stand's post above about this being an especially productive year, which prompted my superstitious self to tempt ill fate by crunching our numbers, and find we were just 11 short of 1,000 birds - a bar we'd not touched since 2016-'17.

I was going to ask this questions a few weeks back but thought I'd wait until the season ended. I figured it would be a good one with numbers, and it ain't over yet.

[Ricky Spanish]

Numbers that duck hunters use rarely add up.
I lose track at 5.


It's always interesting when some random guy shows up to brag on numbers...
Will say stuff like "I've only killed 400 so far this season" and it's day 29 of the 60.
A little quick division and that guy just said he kills 400÷29 ducks per day.
Bailiff....

[Ericdc]

I keep very detailed records, working on my 2nd worst season in the last 10.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Rick]

Date: 1/12/23

Time: morning

Location: mudhole

Cloud Cover: weak wet front to partly cloudy

Wind Direction and Velocity: SW to W moderate

Temperature: upper 60s

Moon phase: 75% waning

Special Notes:

Waterfowl Activity: Little but a few teal moving and ultra high, mostly jack appearing flights until the threatening weather broke and the sun came out, after which several groups of mostly mallards came by at workable ranges.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Couldn't do pecans with the high little stuff, but mallards and a flight of grays did as bid about as often as not. West wind no doubt helped by cutting the normal amount of bird-bumping gunfire to be heard on our end.

Hunters: 2, David and John

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): The bug did some really nice work on a couple of chips.

Special Equipment: SOS

Curses: Heard the dreaded "not first rodeo" and hoped early teal misses attributed to season's first hunt would be the worst of it, but later got my, and no doubt the bug's, chimes badly rung by the shot across our bow that knocked down the morning's only spoon.

Kudos: Mallards made me look like I knew what I was doing, and good guys had a good time.

Birds By Species: 3 blue-wing teal, 2 gadwall, 3 green-wing teal, 7 mallards and 1 shoveller

Photo Ops:

Lagniappe: A belly-up "dead" Susie, that floated quietly on the edge of the pond until Marsh was returning with a chipped drake, rolled over and flew, quacking all the way, right at me. Caught her by the neck and snapped it before she managed to claw a hole in me, but it was "touch and go" for a bit. Don't see that every morning.

[SpinnerMan]

Definitely do not see that every morning.

[Anotherone]

That would’ve made a great video, the great Susie snag!